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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Waiting for CNBC. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Waiting for CNBC
by noteworthy at 7:25 am EDT, May 11, 2009

Maureen Tkacik:

"In this economy," the network’s promotional spots remind viewers at every commercial break, "the most valuable asset you have is information."

CNBC: Now more than ever.

How valuable is it now to be told America is screwed? (Now more than ever?)

They said they were ensuring the “efficient allocation of capital,” but they were allocating a suspicious amount of capital to themselves. Class warfare has been the subject of several CNBC segments already this year, not that the network seems to have a clearly defined view of what class warfare is, simply that the market doesn’t like it.

These days on CNBC strategists incessantly advise viewers to rotate their holdings from stocks to bonds. But other than through bond funds, that’s easier said than done, and so CNBC doesn’t spend much time detailing the specifics of bonds, except inasmuch as they pertain to the broader market. And why should they? Home viewers can’t trade bonds, and CNBC viewers who can know better than to rely on it for anything other than what the broader “market” is doing.

The notion that what’s good for the Dow is good for America is inextricable from the network’s corporate culture. But with investors suddenly jolted back to the late nineties, CNBC seems, slowly, to be reevaluating what it thinks is good for the Dow ergo America.

From March, in a thread about Cramer-Stewart:

You are more likely to become a better athlete by watching ESPN than you are likely to become a better investor by watching CNBC.

See also, from Nassim Taleb:

Large institutions are disproportionately more fragile to Black Swans.

This paper establishes the case for a fallacy of economies of scale in large aggregate institutions. The problem of rogue trading is taken as a case example of hidden risks where rogue traders and losses are considered independently and dependently of the institution’s size. Both independent and dependent loss and hidden positions are shown to lead to the paper’s conclusion, that size and economies of scale have commensurate risks that mitigate the advantages of size.

A final thought from Paul Krugman:

While bankers may find the results of the stress tests “reassuring,” the rest of us should be very, very afraid.


 
 
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